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THANKS to what the US Department of Defense calls "advancements in digital audio technology", America's military funerals will soon sound much better. Aficionados of Westerns should recognise the plaintive strains of Taps, the bugle call played at sunset on army posts, and at military funerals as well. But the armed forces don't have enough real buglers to cover the thousands of veterans' funerals each year, and playing a recording of Taps on a portable stereo is felt to lack dignity. So the DoD has collaborated with industry to create a "ceremonial bugle".

All a soldier in the honour guard has to do is push a button and hold the bugle to his or her lips, and a splendid rendition of Taps (recorded live at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day, 1999) will issue forth.

The DoD, which is now testing 50 of the digital bugles, says that as well as ...

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